Word: asteroid
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...rocket ship is to avoid collisions with meteors, said Dr. Fred L. Whipple, chairman of Harvard's department of astronomy, it should keep pretty well out of the orbits of the earth and the comets, and particularly try to detour around the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But a collision with a meteor won't necessarily be fatal. "Most penetration," said Dr. Whipple, "could be eliminated by a 'meteor bumper,' a second skin of small thickness a short distance outside the true skin of the ship. Meteorites would explode on that bumper and lose most...
Collisions between two small objects (asteroid size or less) are probably quite frequent, and in such cases there is no atmosphere and little gravity to keep dust particles from wandering off on their own. It is mostly these small encounters in the solar system's gravel mill that keep the zodiacal light shining faintly...
...Calculation of the orbit of the asteroid Eros by Dr. Eugene Rabe of the University of Cincinnati Observatory. This led to the discovery that the earth is 1/10th of 1% nearer the sun than previous calculations had placed it (92.9 million miles...
...solar system swarms with asteroids (probably fragments of a shattered planet), but the new-found asteroid is extraordinary. Instead of being almost circular, its orbit is a long ellipse. Revolving around the sun in about 360 days, it passes inside the orbit of Mercury and comes within 22 million miles of the sun. Then it recedes to 156 million miles, beyond the orbit of Mars. No other known asteroid visits both places...
Astronomers think that the new asteroid will prove a useful tool in their unearthly studies. Since it comes close to Mercury, it will help them measure (by changes in its orbit) the mass of the planet, which is not known very exactly. "But [an asteroid] is rather like a concerto," explained Dr. Richardson. "It has no real practical value...